Social Media Marketing and Value Co-creation: A Dynamic Performance Management Perspective

The diffusion of web-based technologies has transformed the today consumers, shifting them from mere users to content generators, able to influence each other’s opinions and choices. Such trend discloses important consequences for firms, products and brands. In order to support strategic and operational decision-making, this study frames the phenomenon of social media marketing into the value co-creation paradigm and shows how to design an analytical framework combining performance management and System Dynamics.

Regional differences in Italian students' performance: a simulation model

This work presents the first results of a research project seeking to build a simulation model able to reproduce the differences of Italian students’ performance at regional level. A preliminary qualitative cause-and-effect model defines the main variable involved in the inter-generational skill formation processes, as well as their interplay with the job market context and the triggering of motivational forces for new skill acquisition. Such model was designed according to a system dynamics perspective, considered suitable for capturing the interrelatedness of key variables and for providing useful simulation tools to conduct and communicate future scenario analyses.     Keywords: regional…

Social Media Marketing and Value Co-Creation

Nowadays social media and brand communities provide virtual places where the consumers can publicize their opinions about products and services and play an active role as marketers, advertisers, value creators through electronic word-of-mouth. Since most of the times these dynamics flow out of business control, in order to pursue firms' objectives, managers and marketers operating in many sectors look at the web social community with growing interest. The present chapter presents a system-wide analysis of the links and feedback mechanisms between the different aspects of value co-creation through social media marketing and brand communities. For the purpose, it is proposed a qualitative mod…

A Research Framework To Design Sustainable Patients’ Mobility Policies In Sicily

“Dealing With Patients’ Mobility Issues: An Inter-Institutional Perspective To Analyze The Phenomenon And To Support Sustainable Policy Making In Sicily”

Nowadays many Italian policy makers, both at a national and regional level, are devoting a growing attention to the phenomenon of patients’ movements seeking public healthcare treatments out of the territorial jurisdiction. This paper presents the main features of a research project being carried out to analyze the mobility flows of Sicilian patients towards other Italian Regions in order to support the design of sustainable related policies. Such study adopts an inter-institutional perspective as the design of sustainable mobility-related policies requires a coordination effort of the Regional Healthcare Department, the Local Health Authorities and the Healthcare providers. The main outcom…

“Toward a full decentralization of public regional healthcare systems: an exploratory system dynamic approach to evaluate some socio-economic healthcare performances after the recent reform in Sicily”.

The Italian Healthcare Service, originally managed by the central Government, has been gradually adjusted toward a decentralized model, with ample devolution of legislative, organizational and financial competencies to the regions, now responsible for the creation of an institutional framework where efficiency, efficacy and accountability have to inform the actions of the healthcare operators. In Sicily for decades those principles seem not to have received practical implementation, as the healthcare system has been chronically marked by unsatisfying social and economic performances. Due to the recent financial disequilibria, the central Government pushed the regional one to reform the enti…